In honor of Memorial Day, we thought we’d honor those veterans who have selflessly fought for our country by giving them a few tips to pay for college. If you are a veteran, or a spouse or child of a veteran, there are several resources to help you partially or completely pay for your collegeeducation.

When you google scholarships for veterans, you will find hundreds of links. To save you time, I’ve developed a few tips to help you narrow your search for financial aid:

Military Tuition Assistance Program: Before you do any searching, find out if you are eligible for this program.

Protect Your Contact Info: Military students are hot commodities in the education market. Because its almost guaranteed that military students will be able to pay for college, many schools are desperate to market them. To make sure you aren’t bombarded with spam, phone calls and direct mail, make sure you read this post.

Narrow Your Search: There are a ton of scholarships out there, but competition can be fierce. If you have any special circumstances, use them to your advantage. For example, there are fellowships and scholarships available for disabled veterans, blind veterans, etc.

Don’t Forget Your Family: Some schools such as Kaplan University offer spouse discounts and there are programs available for the children of veterans as well. In Illinois, students may even be eligible for 100% tuition waivers.

Surf The Web: Additionally, general scholarship and financial aid websites such as fastweb or Next Student should be helpful and I’ve also found these links: